


all we are is skin and bone

by irishmizzy



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Cunnilingus, F/M, Handcuffs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-09
Updated: 2013-08-09
Packaged: 2017-12-22 21:31:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/918238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irishmizzy/pseuds/irishmizzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah holds up her hand, raising Paul’s with it. The handcuffs actually glint in the light. “Cops came calling.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	all we are is skin and bone

**Author's Note:**

> For the trope_bingo square "handcuffed/bound together."

It’s shit, is what it is.

Sarah rests her head on the steering wheel for ten seconds, counting her breaths, regrouping before she throws the car in drive, her hand knocking into Paul’s. She curses under her breath, and then again, louder. He stays silent, his hand moving with hers, metal biting into her skin every time they make a turn. The tension in the car is palpable, humming in her blood and in the air alike.

It’s times like these, when they’re stuck running, trying to make a getaway in a rusted-out car in broad daylight, that she regrets telling Dyad to piss off. They would’ve made this all disappear. They probably would’ve stopped it before it even happened.

Then again, they probably would’ve had Kira grow up in a laboratory, instead of whatever tiny beach town in southern California Mrs. S has secreted her away to, the one Sarah only learned about in a letter she burned after she read. 

“So she’ll learn to surf,” Felix had said, while Sarah sobbed into his shoulder, relieved and heartbroken at once. It’s still a sore point, an open wound of a memory that always on her periphery, this dull ache buried deep in her body that never fully goes away. It is her rallying point, her battlecry, her reason for getting through the day. She’ll live in a hundred shithole sublets and flee from a thousand cops if it gets her back to Kira. If it gets Kira back to her.

“Hey.” Paul rubs his thumb across the back of her hand and she looks up to find the light green. 

“Fuck,” she says, exhaling, and he grunts in agreement as she drives through the intersection.

**

They ditch the car and walk the last stretch, arm-in-arm, their handcuffed hands casually tucked into Paul’s jacket pocket. She keeps her head down and tries to size up the few people they pass, watching for signs of recognition or concern. Each time she curls her hand tighter around his, waiting for the moment things fall apart. But it never comes. They smile at Paul, nod at him and continue on their way.

The anticipation, though, is the worst part.

**

Alison’s glaring at them as soon as she opens the door. “What are you doing here?” 

There’s something so normal about it that the tension bursts in Sarah like a balloon. She sags against Paul, overcome with relief. 

Alison looks past them and frowns. “Did you _walk_?”

“Listen,” Sarah says, “Can we come in?”

“Oh, of course.” Alison steps back to let them inside. “Is everything alright?”

Sarah holds up her hand, raising Paul’s with it. The handcuffs actually glint in the light. “Cops came calling.”

“So you came _here_?”

For a moment Sarah feels guilty. Coming here had been her first instinct. She hadn’t even said anything to Paul, just started driving once they were in the car. They don’t have many options these days, and at least Alison’s place comes with a Dyad-endorsed security system. That beats Felix’s screwdriver and near-constant police surveillance handily. 

She shrugs and starts to cross her arms before she remembers she’s chained to Paul. Stupid asshole detective with a hero complex.

Alison closes her eyes and presses her palms together. She inhales audibly. Any other day, Sarah would laugh. But when Alison opens her eyes, she’s calm again. Close enough, anyway. 

“Well what are you going to do now?” Alison asks, slipping into problem-solving mode.

“Get these off, for starters.”

“Right, yes, obviously. What do you need?”

“A bobby pin,” Sarah says, just as Paul says, “Bolt cutters.”

Alison, to her credit, doesn’t even blink. “I’ll be right back. Don’t... ruin anything.”

Sarah rolls her eyes and wonders if it’s a good or bad thing that she’s reassured by it all.

**

Alison’s sofa is too stuffed to be comfortable, but Sarah and Paul slump on it anyway. It feels almost normal for a moment, just sitting side by side, Paul’s hand on her knee. His fingers pick at the inseam of her jeans out of habit, mostly, but it still sends a small jolt through her skin. They’d been interrupted by the cop earlier; her skin goes hot at the memory, like her body’s taking all her adrenaline and redirecting it with a single-minded focus. 

She finds herself slouching lower, her knees spreading. Paul’s hand slides higher. She can hear Alison moving around downstairs. When Sarah looks at Paul he’s staring straight ahead, eyes trained on the window. He looks bored, almost. She wants to shake him out of it, unsettle him, get under his skin the way he’s under hers.

She shifts, sliding lower on the couch, into his palm. His jaw clenches, enough for her to feel slightly victorious, and then he presses his fingers just so. Sarah gasps. When she tries to cover her mouth she tugs at his wrist, too. He resists, keeps his hand still, applies more pressure. Sarah presses her face into his arm instead.

“Slight problem!” Alison calls out. Sarah clamps her legs together so fast her knees knock and she winces. “We don’t have bolt cutters. But I _did_ find a hack saw!”

“Great, thanks,” she says, standing up. Paul slides his hand deliberately down her leg, as far as the cuffs will allow, before he stands up too. 

“Okay, I have to go pick the kids up and take them to soccer practice, but I left some old newspapers in the craft room, to catch the shavings, just in case, so make sure you spread that out. And uh -- that’s it! I’ll be back and then we can talk about this, okay?”

She points between Sarah and Paul and for a second Sarah thinks she means Paul copping a feel on the couch before she realizes oh, the handcuffs, the police, everything.

“Right, yeah. Of course.” She takes the saw, ignoring the way Alison is watching them. “We’ll just --” She gestures toward the stairs.

Paul’s the first to actually take a step, though. He laces his fingers through Sarah’s as they walk.

“Good luck!” Alison calls over her shoulder, her keys jingling as she waves goodbye. “Don’t scratch my counters!”

Sarah hears the door shut and then Paul’s turning, pressing her into the wall, kissing her like he’s starved for it. His free hand is already unbuttoning her jeans. He smirks when he realizes how wet she already is; Sarah squirms, trying for more -- more friction, more of his hand, just _more_. Her nails dig into the back of his neck, her other hand flopping around uselessly. Fuck, they need to get these handcuffs off.

Paul mouths down her neck, bites -- the cuffs can wait, she thinks, as her head thunks back against the wall. The rest of her body arches into him. She pulls at his hair, trying to get his mouth back on hers. It’s useless; he slides two fingers into her and all the air goes out of her lungs. 

She’s a little distracted, that’s why she’s caught completely off guard when Paul withdraws his fingers, wraps his arm around her waist, and lifts her up. She lands, none too gently, on Alison’s craft table -- fuck, _Alison’s craft table_. Sarah wants to laugh but she’s trying to shimmy, one-handed, out of her pants, and it’s bloody difficult. Paul has to help, tugging one side while she gets the other, her hips canted. They come off, though, and sarah’s never been so thankful for Alison’s stupid “no shoes in the house” rule as she is now.

“Christ,” she says, when Paul hooks his hand behind her knee and hauls her closer to the edge of table. “Watch it.”

When he laughs she can feel it, the huff of air against her skin. The scrape of his five o’clock shadow on her thigh sends shivers down her spine. She’s arching into it before he even makes contact. This time when he chuckles, she feels it everywhere.

He’s never tentative. She likes that about him -- truly likes, not got used to pretending to like in case Beth might’ve. She pulls one leg up, bracing her foot on the table, as he uses his free hand to hold her open so he can lick into her. When he circles his tongue around her clit she curls her fingers in his hair, nails digging into his scalp, holding him there. When he groans, she groans, the two of them caught in a feedback loop that leaves her dizzy. Her thighs are already shaking a bit.

Sarah drags their cuffed hands up to her tits, shirt bunching along the way; when Paul realizes what she’s doing he covers her hand with his, his fingers catching her nipple just frequently enough to keep her on edge. She tries to reach out, grab onto the edge of the table, but he resists. She makes a frustrated noise, a broken-off curse that turns into a gasp when the metal of the cuffs bites sharp at her wrist. Paul’s thumb traces the curve under her breast, an apology written against the smooth skin right under her bra, the way he knows she likes, the way he’s learned makes her shiver.

She fleetingly wonders if that worked for Beth, too. If it works on all for them. How many times has Donnie eaten Alison out on this very table? Ever? She stops contemplating it when Paul slides a finger into her, then two, curling them just right. 

“Fuck -- yeah, just --” she shifts, grinding against his hand, trying to get him to move. She’s right on the edge, so close she can hardly stand it.

“Yeah? Like that?” 

Sarah lifts her head enough to see that he’s smirking. He moves his fingers slowly, lazily, like he could do this all day. They don’t that kind of time. She kicks at his back with her heel.

“Shut up and --” The rest of it disappears when Paul dips his head and sucks her clit. It’s like a switch flipping, the way he picks up the pace, and suddenly everything narrows down to his mouth and his hands, all the points they’re connected. Sarah comes hard, her body arching up from the table.

“Christ,” she says after a minute, body feeling like it’s melting into the tabletop. 

Paul kisses her thigh, his stubble rasping against her hypersensitive skin. Her cunt throbs and she nudges his shoulder with her foot, torn between wanting more and wanting to push him away. He stands up, pulls her towards him with one hand, deciding for her. She goes easily enough, slides right off the table and into his chest. He tangles his hand in her hair, tilts her head and kisses her. 

It’s slow and sloppy and something beneath her ribs stirs, foreign and familiar at once. She bites at his lip to tamp it down, pushes up on her toes, uses momentum to change the angle. 

His breath hitches when she slides her hand into his pants, wraps her fingers around his cock and strokes. 

“Sarah,” he says, his voice rough, just this side of desperate. His eyes flick to the clock on the wall. “Alison --”

She kisses the corner of his mouth to shut him up. 

“We’ll just have to be quick then, yeah?” She strokes him again, her eyebrow raised. There’s a second where she can see him debating it, but then she twists her wrist and watches as his resistance crumbles. He takes a step back, putting just enough space between them that he can shove his pants down before he’s crowding into her again, mouthing wetly at her neck, his teeth sending sparks through all her nerve endings.

He pushes at her hip and she turns automatically, but it still takes a frustratingly long minute to figure out the logistics. She ends up with her arm crossed in front of her so Paul can brace his handcuffed hand on the table. His good hand slides down her spine, just enough pressure that she bends, and then he’s guiding his cock into her. The angle’s not great and the table’s digging into her, but Sarah shifts, cants her hips, and Paul thrusts again and _oh_ , that’s better. She drops her forehead onto her arm and groans. 

Paul palms her stomach, her breast, anywhere he can reach before settling on her hip. His grip is just this side of bruising, the thrust of his hips steady. He ignores how she grinds her own, pushing back, trying to get him to fuck her harder, faster. She can feel her orgasm building; when she touches herself with her free hand it’s right there, like a storm cloud gathering on the horizon, visible but just out of reach. 

“C’mon,” she grits out, not quite sure if she’s talking to herself or to him. It doesn’t matter because Paul lays his hand flat on her back and pushes so her whole body moves under his palm, her hips shifting until he can go deeper. It doesn’t take much for her to come like this. She rubs herself in time to his thrusts once, twice, and that’s enough. She digs her nails into Paul’s arm and just like that he’s coming too, with a stuttered groan, while she shakes apart under him.

He slumps against her, his head resting between her shoulderblades. Her heart’s still racing, her shirt’s sticking to her skin. She’s thinks it’s impressive her legs are still holding her up, but really, the table’s doing most of the work. Fuck if she isn’t going to have its imprint on her skin for ages. She sighs and then so does Paul. His breath ghosts along her spine and she feels something deep inside her stirring again. 

He exhales again and then stands up, wraps his arm around her middle and uses the momentum to move them both until he bumps up into the wall. His pants are still around his ankles, she notices. Hers are across the room, on top of a pile of newspapers she doesn’t even remember knocking over. 

They sink to the floor just as the exhaustion sets in. Her whole body, from her toes to her eyelids, feels weighed down, like gravity has gotten stronger. Paul is warm and solid behind her; she sags further into him, counts the steadily-slowing beats of his heart instead of sheep. He trails his finger along her leg. She thinks he’s making letters but she’s too well-shagged to parse them. She feels like she could sleep for days.

“Hey.” 

Sarah grunts but doesn’t open her eyes. 

“Hey,” he tries again. She turns her face away from his voice. “Sarah.” He punctuates it with a jerk of his wrist.

“Bloody hell,” she says when her arm moves too. The damn handcuffs. So much for sleep.

Paul leans forward, bending her with him, and fishes the bobby pin from his pants pocket. She isn’t paying attention until she hears a soft “ _shit_.”

“It’s stuck,” he says, and then, “and now it’s broken.” He holds up the pin as evidence. Great. 

“You’ve got to be joking,” she says flatly. Paul shifts sideways, reaching for the saw. 

“Oi.” She elbows him in the stomach. “Let me put on my clothes first.”

It’s a struggle to get dressed, but once they’ve managed that and thrown down some newspapers for Alison’s sake, Paul picks up the saw and starts on the chain.

“Sorry it took so long,” Alison says, bursting through the door, “but I stopped for a bolt cutter just in case you were having trouble.”

“Oh thank God,” Sarah says. 

Paul glares at her for a second, betrayed, before before he drops the saw and admits defeat. 

It takes Alison ten seconds to do what they couldn’t manage in -- well, in the five they’d actually attempted to separate themselves.

“Excuse me.” Sarah ducks around Alison. “I just--” She motions to the bathroom. 

“Well,” she hears Alison mutter, at the same time as Paul asks, “Do you have tweezers?”

**

Sarah lets the sink run so she doesn’t have to hear anything Alison and Paul say. Alison’s going to have so many questions that Sarah’s not really in the mood to deal with. She splashes water on her face, fixes her hair. She looks wrecked, wrung out, and she knows it’s not all due to the sex. With the adrenaline gone, there’s a familiar tension building inside her again, gathering at the back of her skull, at the base of her spine. 

She sits on the closed toilet and picks at the handcuff with a bobby pin she found in the medicine cabinet until she feels the mechanism release. She stares at the ring of red on her skin, presses her fingertip against the worst of it, on the underside, where the skin is thinnest. Blood wells up and she sucks in air through her teeth. 

“Sarah?” Alison knocks on the door. 

“Yeah.” She sticks her hand under the water, ignoring the sting. There’s going to be some big conversation now, or the beginnings of one, about the police and Dyad and what their next step should be. Where they should go, what they should do, who they should call. Sarah watches her blood swirl down the drain. “Coming.”


End file.
